Sweet 16 Schedule
-
@BeddieKU23 I’m taking the following:
- Oregon
*KU
-
West Virginia
-
Arizona
-
Butler
-
Kentucky
-
Baylor
-
Florida
-
Ok, one last poke at Duke while it’s fresh…
Nation Thrilled Grayson Allen Returned To Duke For One More Crushing NCAA Loss
-
According to 538, KU is currently the most likely team to make the final four at 53%. Found that interesting. Gonzaga 46%, UK 40%. Unsurprisingly, Florida is the lowest percentage of the favourite in any region at 34%.
-
ESPN has re-seeded the sweet 16 with KU #1. Another site was the same (not CBS apparently) but I can’t remember which.
-
I thought that picture of Frank was really MC Hammer.
-
Tip times are determined to put the #1 seeds in opposite time slots each night.
For Thursday, that means that the West and Midwest #1’s were always going to be opposite each other. Could they have flipped it and put Gonzaga on late? Sure, but given that the Zags play WVU, that means that WVU’s viewers would be tuning in for a game tipping at 11 pm local time. Unfortunately, because the bulk of tournament teams are in the Eastern and Central time zones, that makes working the TV schedule out pretty brutal because you don’t have enough west coast teams.
They compensate by having the West Region tipping 30 minutes later than the Midwest.
Same thing takes place on Friday. UNC plays early, and what would have been Villanova’s spot plays late. They can do that because the two marquee matchups on Friday are both in the South region, with the premier matchup being that UK-UCLA rematch. You also notice that what is thought of as the premier matchup gets the 9:39 time slot both nights.
Really, it’s a compliment to KU that they get the late CBS slot. That means it’s the best game of the night. Had Louisville beaten Michigan, they probably flip the slots to have that Oregon-Louisville game in the 9:39 spot. So really, if you want to blame anyone for this scheduling, blame Louisville.
-
@justanotherfan I think there wouldn’t be any games tipping near 11 pm local time on the east coast. 10PM would be about the latest. Good information though. As some have pointed out, what a challenge to maximize viewership and appease fans.
-
Trying to get the first game tipping after 7 in the Central time zone makes that near impossible. They would have to tip region 1, game 1 at 5:45 Central, followed by region 2, game 1 at 6:15 Central. That would let them tip region 1, game 2 at 8:15 and region 2, game 2 at 8:45.
But again, that makes that first game really early, especially on the west coast. The goal is to have game 1 of both regions wrapping in prime time, and the second games both tipping in prime time (hoping that people will get pulled in to watch the entire second game since its the marquee matchup of the night).
-
I’m perhaps in the minority, but Sweet 16 nights – Thursday/Friday – seem to be the perfect evenings of basketball.
-
My only gripe with the late start Thursday is having to be up roughly 4 hrs for work after the game ends. And throw in adrenaline from the game and I’m looking at even less sleep but a KU win will make all of that lack of sleep even better!
Otherwise don’t have any issue this has been the way for many years. Maybe we were usually playing on a Friday and it mattered less because generally more people have the weekend off…
-
For me it’s a Friday tipoff - at 3 a.m.
We are still DST here, otherwise it would be 4.
-
I do not agree. Villanova was the overall #1 seed followed by KU at #2; Gonzaga was the overall #4 seed. Gonzaga beat S. Dakota St., a #16 seed with a 18-16 record by 20 points in the first round, the same margin KU beat the much higher ranked Michigan State in the second round. Gonzaga had to fight hard to beat a pedestrian Northwest team by 6 points.
Gonzaga struggled in its second game while KU dominated both of its games. I am thinking WVU will expose Gonzaga whose record is built on smoke and mirrors and a weak conference.
-
@JayHawkFanToo Bingo. Gonzaga is not going to know what hit them.
-
@JayHawkFanToo I am not sure why you care so much what one guy at CBS wrote. He specifically said he was not basing it at all on the original NCAA seeding and was weighing the regular season into it. It is an arguably defensible position. Your position is also an arguably defensible position. People can differ on these things.
-
@ParisHawk You mean, still not DST? Still oh-dark o’clock! But no doubt there are hundreds of bistros and cafes showing American bb in the middle of the night!
-
@StLJhawk Much as I don’t like Allen, he does have one more NCAA championship than our guys do, so to avoid jinxes I am not casting any “Ha Ha’s” at him yet.
If we are hung over from celebrating two weeks from now, I will come back and retract my post, and proceed to unleash a big Bronx cheer at him!
-
@justanotherfan I like blaming Louisville, and for last year, too!
-
I did not say I cared much about who is number 1, I simply disagreed with his premise that Gonzaga is #1. The NCAA apparently agrees with me since it ranked KU ahead of Gonzaga at the start of the tournament and KU has played much better than Gonzaga since then.
Reseeding is typically done to reflect how the teams left are playing since the start of the tournament. If you are going to use the entire season…why reseed? Isn’t this what the original seeding did?
Using the entire body of work should actually work against Gonzaga since it played in the weakest conference of any of the teams in the Sweet 16 and it is the only team left while the Big 12 has 3 teams.
We will find out soon enough how good Gonzaga is…
-
@JayHawkFanToo Please let me apologize. I misunderstood. I honestly thought Norlander has a right to have his own opinion about Gonzaga, and I did not realize that it is wrong for him to think of Gonzaga now as the #1 seed.
-
@JayHawkFanToo Maybe you’ll be pleased with this. I know I am after seeing who one of his other #1 seeds is!
-
No need to apologize (even sarcastically), we are in place where we all have opinions of our own and they don’t always agree. Again, Norlander has the right to his opinion and I have the right to mine and I also have the rights, as does everybody else, to disagree with his opinion. We are all big boys and we can state our cases, form our opinions and draw our own conclusions.
Interesting that Norlander would seed Gonzaga #1 when he is picking Arizona to beat them and he is picking KU to win the Tournament…ironic, isn’t it?
-
Not that I frequent ESPN all that much anymore, but when I clicked on the NCAA tab today what I saw was:
“From Hill to Laettner, 25 years later” and
“How did it all go wrong for Duke?”
Cool, ESPN. Now I remember why I stopped visiting your site.
-
Another pick for KU.
-
@KirkIsMyHinrich I noticed that when I posted my link a few lines above here.
-
